Government experts against measures to combat the “mirrors” of sites proposed by Roskomnadzor

Photo: Alexey Zotov / Kommersant

Right holders have long stated the need to combat the "mirrors" of sites. For the simple reason that the term “site mirror” is not spelled out in the legislation, the Moscow City Court, for example, refuses to automatically block copies of already blocked resources.

Earlier, the working group at Roskomnadzor proposed to oblige search services to remove information about the “mirrors” from the issue, and to provide operators with punishment for not blocking copies of sites. Government experts disagree with the proposed measures, Kommersant reports . A number of experts declare the "impracticability of requirements", "erroneousness and ambiguity" of the wording.

“The draft law requires significant processing: at the level of legal technology, and at the substantive level, everything is done rather carelessly, amendments rather confuse the existing order. For example, means of circumventing locks and “mirrors” of sites are things with completely different status, but in the amendments these concepts are equalized, ”said Mikhail Yakushev, member of the Expert Council of the Russian Government, head of the Svyaz and IT working group.
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Experts also argue that Roskomnadzor gives an “unreasonably broad” definition of a copy of the site. “The draft law represents a danger to business, as it continues the process of introducing into Russian legislation incorrect, both from a technical and legal point of view,“ everyday ”terminology,” the conclusion says. Government experts advise adding the criterion that a derived site should be managed by a single person or an interconnected group of people. Otherwise, a derivative can be recognized as a site that has no relation to the pirate resource at all, but simply copied some part of the content.

In conclusion, the requirements for search services presented by Roskomnadzor are also criticized. The fact is that foreign search engines are outside Russian jurisdiction, and are not required to remove such information from the issue. But the Russian search engines will be obliged to do this, therefore, there is discrimination against domestic companies. Plus, search engines do not have the ability to verify the authenticity of documents presented by copyright holders.

Experts recommend to postpone the introduction of such requirements "until the legislative establishment of technical requirements for blocking information" and unambiguously determine the methods of blocking the encrypted traffic protocols HTTPS. Here we are also talking about the proposal of Roskomnadzor to introduce fines of up to 100 thousand rubles for the absence of blockages of “pirated” sites by telecom operators.